Ransomware pushers are shameless

Researchers from FireEye recently collected messages from a Web site set up by the creators of a ransomware program called TeslaCrypt to interact with their victims. They seem to set themselves up as service providers offering technical support and discounts to their “customers.”

Some of the messages read: a father who’s struggling to survive “in this expensive world” and has been robbed of his baby’s pictures; a company’s employee who lost business files to the malware and now fears losing his job; a housecleaning business set up by maids who can’t afford to pay the ransom; a person who has no money and now can’t even file his tax returns because of the malware; a non-profit that raises money for curing blood cancer and pleads for a refund.

The hackers did in some cases lower the ransom, probably in order to collect some cash rather than none at all.

The FireEye researchers discovered and tracked 1,231 Bitcoin addresses; 13 percent paid the ransom in Bitcoins.

One good piece of news is that researchers from Cisco Systems recently developed a tool that is capable of decrypting files affected by some TeslaCrypt versions without having victims pay a ransom.

Source: PCWorld